Chapter 6: An abominable invasion

The call to arms has been sounded, so I join my parents during the briefing.

A scout has seen an abomination wandering in from the endlands, a relatively small one, but even the small ones are very dangerous. We are not unprepared though, since one decides to head our way a couple times a decade. 

This time I’m partaking in the subjugation though. Since I finally am able to use ranged weapons with consistency and precision. 

After the briefing, we rally the troops. A couple dozed high skilled mana users, and equally many stamina users, evenly distributed between defenders and ranged attackers. The only ones to actually engage in melee fighting are my parents, and they said that I’m not allowed to. 

Something as large as an abomination stepping on you, will kill you, regardless of how powerful you are, they said.

Once the morning comes, we don our best armor, and head out towards the abomination. In addition to our fifty or so elite warriors, we have support people, couriers, scouts and siege engineers. 

The siege engineer's job is to set up a favorable battlefield, which entails large trenches and fortified positions.

Once the scouts confirm the abomination's position, the engineers start setting up the battlefield such that the battle will happen in a day, giving them enough time to finish it.

The place that’s decided on is just outside a farming village that’s near the outskirts of our territory, and while there are towns that are farther away, the abomination would already have passed them, hopefully not destroying them in the process.

The evening is tense as everyone plans and double checks their equipment. I do as well, looking over my set of golden royal guard armor. I top up the crystal mounted on the inside of the chestplate, which holds almost as much stamina as myself. It powers the enchantments, letting it negate a very strong attack, and letting me siphon it out whenever I need it. Batteries aren’t standard equipment for anyone because of their rarity, but pretty much all the elites get their hands on one. 

The chestplate is made in a vedge style to encourage glancing blows and to give space to the battery, and is superior to the form fitting variety favored by the less battle hardened nobles. Those ones can turn a non-fatal blow and direct it towards the heart, making it fatal. Why would anyone use armor that doesn’t properly protect you?

Technically the armor is just lent to me for this event, since I’m not technically a royal guard, but the set was made specifically for me when I stopped growing, so that I could guard the royal family in the future, making it mine in anything but name.

The night passes with the tension only increasing, especially with the engineer building what is essentially a fortress overnight. Thankfully it’s not raining.

Come morning, everyone silently and professionally prepares themselves. I don the armor, carefully armoring my tail with the interlocking plates. With the fur constrained like that, it makes my tail look a lot thinner, and it was quite odd the first few times I wore armor like that, but it’s fine now, and I really don’t want to lose my tail.

As I make it to the top of my designated fortification, I spot it. A black thing poking over the trees in the distance. I can’t even see it properly and it sends a shiver down my spine. The same seems to be true for the rest of the people here.

The terrible feeling only gets worse until it reaches the peak when it exits the forest. A black blob of mismatched limbs supported by two huge feets, one like an elven food, the other like one of a goat. There is also a smaller foot that doesn’t quite reach the ground. 

It is slowly limping towards our, by now very defensive, fortification. In fact our placement is perfect and it’s heading towards the center of our semicircle.

Once it gets within firing distance, it starts to indiscriminately cast spells at anyone. In response, the people assigned to defense start to erect barriers, or shoot the spell out of the sky, though the attacking group is ordered to hold fire until it enters the killzone.

Fireballs explode as it collides with a block of ice, mana bullets splash harmlessly against barriers and lightning bolts are redirected to the ground.

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I can’t sense the mana it’s using, but the amount of spells are terrifying, and the stamina that I can sense, is terrifyingly strong. And this is supposedly a relatively small one. The long lectures I got about abominations doesn’t do them justice, the sheer wrongness of their presence is indescribable. 

We, as the attackers, are supposed to prioritize immobilizing it first, before moving onto the kill. Each limb we destroy is a reduction in its fighting potential, so target limbs before the torso, if that is even the right word for that ball of flesh.

As it nears the killzone, I manifest a Javelin and get ready to throw it at the left goat leg. 

As I hear the order to attack, I throw the javelin. It flies fast through the air, though slightly slower than the average attack. Half a dozen powerful attacks hit each leg, and less than a minute after we start attacking, it is immobilized.

Then we begin the grind to kill it. Fireballs, charged arrows, ice spikes, boulders and more repeatedly smash into it, with it throwing as much back at the defenders. 

After two more volleys are fired, its behavior changes and a toothy maw opens on the front of it. An unbelievably loud roar knocks me to the ground. I don’t even hear the loud crash as the abomination crashes into the central portion of the fortification.

Once I get my bearing, I see it thrashing about, smashing the already broken wall. I kinda just stand there in shock until someone shooks me. I look at him and see his mouth move, but I don’t hear anything.

I just shake my head and point to my ears. Nothing I can really do at the moment, aside from continuing my ranged attack. 

Pulling more stamina from my battery, I charge another javelin. Throwing it destroys a small arm that flings mana bullets, and pierces into the torso.

While I continue to fight at range, I see a handful of people engage in melee with the thing, while some healers pull out the wounded from the chaos.

Mom and dad slice of limbs like nobody's business, swatting away whatever spells are targeted at them. I really want to join them, but have been explicitly forbidden, and can see why as the largest tentacle swats dad away, sending him flying nearly a hundred meters.

Luckily he gets back up, though he seems in pain. Soon enough though, he was back at the slicing.

After that, it’s mostly clean fighting with the abomination roaring once more, but now the defenders were prepared, and luckily it never moved after the first roar.

It took a while, but eventually the eerie feeling from the abomination disappeared and victory was called. I never heard the shouts, as my hearing only got healed afterwards, but it’s hard missing everyone raising their arms in victory.

The support personnel prepared a feast in celebration. Dad held a speech celebrating our victory, and especially the honor of the ones that died. Only two casualties against an abomination is very good. Apparently it’s usually in the dozens, though that is because the abominations are usually larger, thus more people have to be employed, which means we can’t only stick to the elites.

The fallen will be honored as heroes, and given an appropriate sendoff once we return tomorrow.

We continued to feast long into the night, and once the morning arrived we started our return home, successful in defending the kingdom.